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Thursday, March 26, 2020

The Social Butterfly and the Toilet Paper

Toilet Paper Roll Butterfly
I got to wondering about the great toilet paper panic, and then I read about the problems with food distribution, and I conjured up this story.

The big crunch at the grocery stores was caused by all the restaurants shutting down. The story is that America was a 50-50 country, 50% of our meals were eaten at home and 50% were eaten away from home, i.e. restaurants. The food distribution system was set up to distribute food that way. Trucking companies have schedules, drivers have routes, people have jobs to do, and it all depends on everything running, well, if not smoothly, smoothly enough that we can tolerate the minor bumps and bangs. But when one end of the chain comes to a halt, well everything goes to handbasket heaven, hence rampant confusion and hordes of locusts descending on hapless grocery stores.

So there is a certain level of society that spends their days flitting about, talking to people, going out to eat. Maybe it's their job, maybe they are politicians, maybe they are making deals, and maybe they are just social butterflies. In any case when they suddenly found themselves without lunch, they went home looking for something to eat, found nothing, decide to go to the bathroom before they head out to the grocery store and discover, because they haven't used this bathroom in six months, that there isn't any toilet paper! OMG! What a disaster! Whatever will I do?

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